Japan Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power plant blog
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He isn't a social worker. He's a recruiter. The men in Sendai Station are potential laborers that Sasa can dispatch to contractors in Japan's nuclear disaster zone for a bounty of $100 a head.

"This is how labor recruiters like me come in every day," Sasa says, as he strides past men sleeping on cardboard and clutching at their coats against the early winter cold.

It's also how Japan finds people willing to accept minimum wage for one of the most undesirable jobs in the industrialized world: working on the $35 billion, taxpayer-funded effort to clean up radioactive fallout across an area of northern Japan larger than Hong Kong.

Almost three years ago, a massive earthquake and tsunami leveled villages across Japan's northeast coast and set off multiple meltdowns at the Fukushima nuclear plant. Today, the most ambitious radiation clean-up ever attempted is running behind schedule. The effort is being dogged by both a lack of oversight and a shortage of workers, according to a Reuters analysis of contracts and interviews with dozens of those involved.

In January, October and November, Japanese gangsters were arrested on charges of infiltrating construction giant Obayashi Corp's network of decontamination subcontractors and illegally sending workers to the government-funded project.

In the October case, homeless men were rounded up at Sendai's train station by Sasa, then put to work clearing radioactive soil and debris in Fukushima City for less than minimum wage, according to police and accounts of those involved. The men reported up through a chain of three other companies to Obayashi, Japan's second-largest construction company.

Obayashi, which is one of more than 20 major contractors involved in government-funded radiation removal projects, has not been accused of any wrongdoing. But the spate of arrests has shown that members of Japan's three largest criminal syndicates - Yamaguchi-gumi, Sumiyoshi-kai and Inagawa-kai - had set up black-market recruiting agencies under Obayashi.

"We are taking it very seriously that these incidents keep happening one after another," said Junichi Ichikawa, a spokesman for Obayashi. He said the company tightened its scrutiny of its lower-tier subcontractors in order to shut out gangsters, known as the yakuza. "There were elements of what we had been doing that did not go far enough."

In early November I bought a Radex RD1212 radiation monitor from Amazon. The Radex is Russian made with an English menu. It's simple ans seems to work fine. One feature of the unit is that it keeps a record of the time and strength of radiation it senses.

I used it daily at first to get an idea of what was normal here on Kauai. The unit measures in micro-sieiverts per hour. That's a millionths of a sievert. As a reference;

A person can safely be exposed to 3,650 micro-sieiverts in a year or .4 micro-sieiverts/hour.

A radiation worker in the US is limited to a dose of 50,000 micro-sieiverts in a year.

A person who absorbs 100,000 micro-sieiverts in a year is considered to have a clear increased cancer risk.

A person absorbing 2,000,000 micro-sieiverts will suffer severe radiation poisoning that could lead to death.

So this is the warning of what is to come when they 'locate' the cores... you would think they could do this from Space no?

Additionally, TEPCO are now allowing workers to stay in the no go zone, to expedite their work vs travel. They purport that they will only be allowed to stay in areas over night that are less than 20 Sv per year dose (where people are allowed in for a few hours to check their pets and houses)Link

Sadly, with the Steaming of Unit #3, the fate of the Planet and Pacific still hangs by a thread. They can't get near it, and we assume that there may be a new meltdown of the spent fuel...

I am not a great fan of beforeitsnews, but when I received news the other day of Alaska Airways flight being cancelled because the crew called in sick with flu, it stretched credulity.

Before It’s News has recently received the following tip from a confidential source who asked that we get this information out to the public. In light of recent cancellations of airline flights out of Alaska, Oregon and Washington state, was there another reason behind those cancellations besides what we have already been told? While the official word is that ‘the flu’ has struck Alaska Airlines crews, causing the cancellations of 24 flights, we have been informed that the real reason that crew members have called in sick has been due to fears of high levels of radiation in the air, as confirmed by this recent story that hot particles are now in the lungs of Americans, especially in Seattle, via an Interview with nuclear expert Arnie Gundersen of Fairewinds. That same story shared with us that helicopters conducted secret flights to do surveys of the amount of radiation in the air and adds credence to more secretive military flights that were conducted just days ago and shared below.

Friday, 27 December 2013

Occupy the NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission)From California's Citizen Action Response Team --Fukushima is Here explanation of what happened in Fukushima back in 2011. You'll note Fukushima is on the EAST coast of Japan with the Pacific Ocean right there. That Pacific Ocean leads directly to our WEST COAST namely Alaska, Hawaii, California, etc. All that headed to us.https://www.facebook.com/FukushimaResponseBayArea

Saturday, 21 December 2013

US sailors and military personnel are suffering serious health effects as a result of exposure to radioactive fallout during relief efforts in the immediate aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Can they sue the nuclear plant's Japanese operator, TEPCO, in an American jurisdiction for withholding accurate radiation data from US military authorities that might have prevented their exposure?

That's the case being brought by a growing list of plaintiffs and their attorneys in a San Diego court. The sailors and marines were exposed to radioactive fallout for many days during Navy relief efforts led by the San Diego-based nuclear-powered supercarrier USS Ronald Reagan in the 3/11 triple nuclear meltdown at Fukuhima, Japan following a devastating earthquake and tsunami.

In this video, plaintiffs Lindsay Cooper and Mathew Bradley, together with their attorneys Charles Bonner, Paul Garner and Cabral Bonner report their experiences and lay out their case.

The judge has given them until January 6, 2014 to file a revised version of their complaint.

Friday, 20 December 2013

TOKYO--December 20, 2013--The two reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station that largely escaped damage from the March 2011 tsunami that crippled the other four will be voluntarily shut down and converted into testing and training facilities, the Tokyo Electric Power Co. announced.

Units 5 and 6, which sit some distance further back from the shore than the other four reactors, never totally lost emergency cooling power in the aftermath of the tsunami and thus escaped the damage that affected the other four units. They have been in "cold shutdown" but are largely intact and could have been restarted to generate electrical power.

However, TEPCO has instead decided to turn the two generating units and their reactors into full-size testing and training facilities that will enhance the utility's ability to test methods and train workers in the decontamination and decommissioning work currently underway at the other four Fukushima Daiichi units.

Thursday, 19 December 2013

50.Reduce Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Dangers(Continued from December 3, 2013)From: Councilmember WorthingtonRecommendation: Adopt a Resolution urging the United Nations to form an International Independent Commission of Experts (IICE) to formulate a plan to reduce the radiation being released from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, and instructing the City’s Health Department to research and inform the public regarding elevated risk from seafood and other Pacific basin products, and to educate the population of Berkeley regarding specific treatments for radiation exposure and have in place emergency procedures to administer treatment, if necessary, to mitigate radiation exposure. Copies of the resolution to be sent to the U.N. General Assembly, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power, President Barack Obama Senator Dianne Feinstein, Senator Barbara Boxer, Congresswoman and Representative to the 68th Session of the U.N. General Assembly Barbara Lee, and Governor Jerry Brown.Financial Implications: NoneContact: Kriss Worthington, Councilmember, District 7, 981-7170DOWNLOAD IT HERE!http://www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/Clerk/City_Council/2013/12Dec/Documents/2013-12-17_Item_50_Reduce_Fukushima_Daiichi.aspx

(this is the best video example I have found for those who have limited knopwledge of the science)

"Published on Jun 6, 2013
Our body is made of billions of cells which are arranged to form organs. Approximately one and a half metres of DNA are stored in each cell.
DNA undergoes permanent attacks and there a numerous aggressive agents. The following can be mentioned: solvents and pesticides, combustion smoke, viral aggressions, ultraviolet radiation, ionising radiation. All molecules can be affected by radiation, but it is when DNA is impacted that there are the greatest consequences for cellular operation."

nsnbc , – Levels of the radioactive isotope cesium from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi power plant in northern Japanese forests have almost doubled within one year and will continue increasing as the forests accumulate the isotope.

The Japanese Nikkei Daily reported yesterday that measurements, made in forests between 60 and 120 kilometers from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant show, that cesiumlevels in sampled leaves have almost doubled within one year.

Measurements taken in June 2012 showed that more than half of the sampled leaves contained 26.000 bequerels per kilogram.

Measurements taken one year later, in June 2013, showed that more than half of the leaves contained 42.000 bequerels per kilogram. Soil samples, representing the surface earth up to a depth of ten centimeters, increased from about 721 to 3.000 bequerels.

Arnie Gundersen, Chief Engineer at Fairewinds, Dec. 16, 2013: The Japanese parliament has just passed the state secrets law. It’s really an information ‘iron curtain’ that’s preventing people in Japan from learning just how bad the exposures were that they received after the accident at Fukushima. […] They’re trying to underestimate the amount of radiation that the Japanese received […] I think they’re neglecting some really serious sources of radiation in their effort to convince the Japanese people that nuclear power is safe. […] These exposures not being calculated by the Japanese, or the IAEA, are in fact enormous. [..] Fukushima was 3 times worse than Chernobyl as far as the noble gases [e.g. xenon, krypton] that were released. […] There’s already a 10-fold increase in thyroid issues in Japan and we’re just at the beginning of the thyroid epidemic. […] As I discovered when I was in Tokyo during the book tour during 2012, all of Japan is a radiologically contaminated area, and the people in Japan need to take extraordinary precautions. The net effect of all this is the total exposure to the Japanese is being grossly underestimated.

All of the world's oceans are connected to one another; there is only one world ocean. A fifth-grade student looking at a world map can easily see this. So when we talk about the Pacific Ocean being contaminated by Fukushima with radiated water, we are saying that all this radiation is flowing into our one world ocean on a daily basis, with no end in sight. Whether we say 300 tons of radiated water have been flowing into the Pacific Ocean every day since Fukushima, March 11, 2011, or whether we say 83,000 gallons/day of radiated water -- an incomprehensible amount of poisoned water is flowing into our one ocean.
Some may argue that Japan has a territorial right to the waters off its shores. The definition of territorial waters is as followshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_waters "Territorial waters, or a territorial sea, as defined by the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, [1] is a belt of coastal waters extending at most 12 nautical miles (22.2 km; 13.8 mi) from the baseline (usually the mean low-water mark) of a coastal state. The territorial sea is regarded as the sovereign territory of the state"
Since the radiation in the ocean from Fukushima flows way beyond the territorial waters of Japan, why are the nations of the world allowing Japan and TEPCO to have total control over what happens? We must all have a say about Fukushima and radiated water flowing into our one ocean. Can the people of the world find a way to take control away from Japan and TEPCOlegally now and have an independent international team of experts give their brains, hearts, and souls to the job?Some participants of the weekly vigil at the Japanese Consulate in Boston by Photo courtesy Sheila Parks
On December 1, 2013 Arnie Gundersen (http://fairewinds.org/) said, "Dale Klein [the former chair of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), and the current chair of the Nuclear Reform Monitoring Committee -- an advisory board to TEPCO] is now suggesting that we're just going to take [Fukushima's radioactive water] and pump it into the Pacific. And I don't think that's a very good idea. It's cheap and it's fast, it's the expedient way of doing it, but really there's something called the London dumping convention. And back in 1972, Greenpeace was very active in preventing radiation from being dumped into the ocean and to my way of thinking, this would violate the London Dumping Convention if they did it." See the interview and transcript with Gundersen, and this particular question to him and his response at 4:10 minutes. http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=11085.
Here is the London Convention aka Marine Dumping law and also note the 1996 protocolhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Convention_on_the_Prevention_of_Marine_Pollution_by_Dumping_of_Wastes_and_Other_Matter. On ABC News on November 20, 2013, Klein said, "At the end of the day, when the water is discharged, it will be released in a way that it's diluted." http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-11-20/fukushima27s-contaminated-water-will-eventually-be-dumped-in-o/5104584. A few questions for Klein: What do you mean specifically by "diluted"? The ocean cannot dilute radiation. Please give us hard, cold evidence that what you call dilution is possible. Many scientists state that this is not true.

Fukushima, Japan (NEWSTABULOUS) – The 4th Nuclear Reactor was reportedly on fire at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan yesterday, March 14th.

Radiation was spewing out of control into the atmosphere. Fuel rods being held in storage pools, where the water had started to boil and subsequently evaporate, leaving a shortage of water to keep these fuel rods adequately cooled. Apparently, it is too dangerous for plant personnel to approach these pools to adequately determine the situation.

After this announcement it was said the flames had been extinguished by dousing them, and that it was unclear if the fire was completely out, but smoke and fire were no longer visible.

Shortly thereafter, the flames, which were announced as being put out, were aflame again. A government official, Minoru Ogoda, explained that it was unclear as to if this was a brand new fire or if the fire on Tuesday was never really put out in the first place.

Fuel rods in the storage pools are still radioactive and could be just as hot as the ones in the nuclear reactor cores. For whatever reason, the proposed plan put together to fly helicopters over the storage pools to spray cold water, is being put on the back burner.

This may be because they want to try and spray cold water directly through a gaping hole in a wall from an explosion to a reactor building, but this could be unlikely as well given the small size of the holes compared to the bigger problem at hand.

The explosions the Fukushima Daiichi plant caused a surge of radiation 800 times as concentrated as the hourly recommended exposure limit in Japan.

More than 100,000 people are believed to be in the 18 mile perimeter around the plant that have been evacuated. Chief cabinet secretary, Yukio Edano, urged people to take the necessary precautions:

“Please do not go outside, please stay indoors, please close windows and make your homes airtight.”

It is clear that the control over the meltdowns of 3 reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant is being lost.

A surge in purchases online for iodide pills is proof the people are extremely worried about the radiation poisoning because of the high levels of exposure.